ToneWood wrote: Shave horse first - just can't get myself to start on it yet.

Then buy Mike's book. He shows in good detail the production of Champion the Lumber Horse You make it from 50 x 100 mm x 9.6 meters softwood in several hours - less than half a day. If you want, I have one spare copy @ £15 plus postage - or get it from Amazon, or Mike. Just take action - today!You really will wonder how you got on without a shave horse.

ToneWood wrote: I would love to make a chair but don't feel ready for that yet.

What's the worst that could happen? You'd get firewood plus learning. Nothing wrong with that!Mike's instructions are pretty clear. As well as shave horse, you'll need a veritas 5/8" tenon cutter - approx £80. Or post a request here to find someone local to you who can just show you, or give you a one-day course to make a frame stool. It is quite straight forward. You may not go beyond stools, and never make a chair which is more complex. The stools are VERY useful. I have only made 5 and we are well pleased with them.

That is a nice shave horse. 2x4's that's something I can get my head round - built a big shed out of them a few years back. Looks like that design could also be readily adapted to a dead-head design or Dave Fisher bowl transportable bowl horse (which is similar looking but longer & with a horizontal dead-head design).

Is a tenon-cutter really necessary? For the bowl-mate I just shaved the legs down with a draw-knife. I guess it's a matter of time & quality - it would save time by allowing you to get a precise fit first time w/o a lot of fuss trying and adjusting and trying again.

ToneWood wrote:Is a tenon-cutter really necessary? For the bowl-mate I just shaved the legs down with a draw-knife. I guess it's a matter of time & quality - it would save time by allowing you to get a precise fit first time w/o a lot of fuss trying and adjusting and trying again.

To make shave horse, you don't need a tenon cutter. Sorry my post was not clear - the tenon cutter is helpful to make frame furniture, and not essential. A pole lathe will do fine to turn such tenons.And you are right about time saved if you have tenon cutter(s). My bowl-mate-type items all sit on 1 1/2" diameter legs, all cut with Veritas' wonderful cutter. My low bench legs are all 19 " long and 1" diameter, cut with 1" diameter cutter. We use lots of these benches at shows - I must have 30 legs and 8 plank benches. Because all the tenons are exactly the same diameter and length, the legs slot into the planks below the surface and don't stick up in your bum. And at 19" they fit inside a Tesco box.

ToneWood wrote: Shave horse first - just can't get myself to start on it yet.

... Just take action - today!You really will wonder how you got on without a shave horse.

Gavin, I was just thinking a shave-horse would be a really handy tool for making a shave-horse . I saw somebody selling 3 pretty decent small English-style shave horses on ebay with oak bits for £50 each + postage (ebay courier ~£10), thought that's a good price (there is a similar but more greenwood one going for £375) but the idea is to make your own. That, combined with the necessary encouragement & prompting from you & mstibs finally caused me to gird my loins & get on with it today. I had to dress up to go out for a meal at lunch time which rather interrupted the flow of things though.

I got the main platform drilled and cut a 45mm slot in it, and made 4 riven-ash legs. Unfortunately the platform is very old dry pitch pine (possibly an old scaffolding plank), so there is no chance that it will shrink down tight on the legs, worse yet, the legs are wet, green ash and definitely will dry and shrink down (so I left them a bit large while I dry them). So I figure I will probably need to wedge each leg, like an axe handle to secure it, no big whoop.

Here is the base - followed the plans for Drew Langsner's saw horse in his book & Jogge Sundqvist's - essentially the same design but the latter has more useful measurements & slightly simplified method of attaching the legs & the former has a useful photograph. My main board is only 5 foot long, as that's my longest board - the plan is for 6 foot but I reckon 5' is still quite long & looking at the photo in Drew's book, it looks like he has about 8" of unused seat behind him.

Drilled holes with 35mm Forstner bit. Used the same bit to drill a series of holes down the proposed slot & finished making the slot with a large chisel.

Saw horse - platform 1.jpg (22.11 KiB) Viewed 15340 times

Tools used and ash legs - I've shaved & shaped the legs since this was taken, the legs will need to dry now.2 big, old flat Chisels (one stamped 1918) - either one would have done the job, a big old "pig sticker" mortice chisel (handy for the ends), the bottom of my old froe mallet (now my bench mallet), drill with 35mm Forstner bit, pan of water to cool drill bit, tape measure, set-square.

UPDATE: By the way - what do you do for the main pivot? Presumably use a wooden dowel or metal bar but how do you drill it - very long, wide drill bit? Actually I do have one very long spade-end drill bit, about a foot/30cm long, 1/2" (1.28cm) diameter - I'd forgotten all about it but came across it in a corner under a pile of shavings this week while sweeping up; bought it a decade ago for one specific task, to drill the main support bolt hole(s) for my old shed roof (American sheds are heavy duty - made with 2x4 "studs") - probably had to go through 3 or 4 studs.

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ToneWood wrote:finally caused me to gird my loins & get on with it today

Thumbs up Tone! Don't worry with the legs. Let 'em dry while you work on the horse and once they are dried wedge them.Cheers!STIBS

Saxons. Were good wood-turners, they had to be because they were poor potters...from "A Short History of Woodturning with the Pole-lathe" by Brian G. Howarth; My bilingual (de/en) Blog: http://mstibs.wordpress.com

I see there is a new Ray Mears carving book in the offing - not yet released but already listed on Amazon: "Ray Mears Handbook No. 1: Carving"Ray Mears got me interested in carving, probably many others too.

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Woodland Crafts in Britain - by Herbert L. EdlinMentioned recently by Sean Hellman & anobium (thanks). It made me feel quite nostalgic for the people I remember in my Grandfather's generation and the England you only see in old black & white films now. The above link is for Amazon but I managed to get one of the cheaper, later 1970s editions from ebay (there are original 1949 first editions for sale there too though). I can't believe how well preserved it is - I've received new books in worse condition. I will pass it on when I am done with it, I'm not a collector and I don't want to become a hoarder.

Last edited by ToneWood on Mon May 27, 2013 8:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.

witt wrote:Yes, and some pages which are shown on different famous sites come from some scanning I've done.

Witt, if someone (me) were only going to buy one book on blacksmithing - would this be the one that you'd recommend?I don't plan to do any/much blacksmithing but would like to understand the principles and practice better - seems like the Swedes excel at this sort of thing.

witt wrote:Yes, and some pages which are shown on different famous sites come from some scanning I've done.

Witt, if someone (me) were only going to buy one book on blacksmithing - would this be the one that you'd recommend?I don't plan to do any/much blacksmithing but would like to understand the principles and practice better - seems like the Swedes excel at this sort of thing.

While I think about purchasing the above, I came across this much cheaper American book which looks like a good place to start (i.e. aimed at beginner hobbiest, cheap hardback, nicely illustrated, rave reviews by purchasers, preview looks v. good to me):